Morning
by Beaubier
Summary: 1602 oneshot. Jean is gone, and Roberto Trefusis is pensive. He finds companionship and understanding in an unlikely place. RobertoWerner friendship. Cause that's the way it should be, in any 'verse.


TITLE: Morning  
AUTHOR: Beaubier  
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fastlove.for.rentATgmailDOTcom  
FANDOM: Marvel 1602  
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Given gladly, but I do request that you let me know.  
CATEGORY: Drama/Romance  
RATINGS/WARNINGS: Rated PG  
SUMMARY: Jean is gone, and Roberto Trefusis is pensive. He finds companionship and understanding in an unlikely place. Roberto/Werner friendship. Cause that's the way it should be, in any 'verse.  
DISCLAIMER: Marvel 1602 and all its characters are the properties of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. 1602 was conceived and written by Neil Gaiman, after the genius of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I just wish I was as cool as those guys. Don't sue me, I'm just having fun.  
NOTES: This ficlet was written for the LJ community 1602ficathon at the request of LJ user silverapples. This takes place near the beginning of issue #8, the morning before the J-Men head out on the little boat to stop Enrique and gain an audience with him at sea. Just after their initial arrival at Roanoke, and after Jean Grey's funeral at sea. Mad props to DoubleL27 of ff.n fame for the last minute beta save. You win!

(Like I said on the last one, TTW is on the way! Ficathon called!)

* * *

'_Tis a strange thing, to think she is gone. Dead and fallen to ashes. _

_I've seen many a life lost at sea. My own uncle died of the bloody flux near Panama during my first sea voyage, in fact. _

_I remember that funeral. Solemn and pointed. I remember thinking he'd died like a soldier, like he wanted. He was a great man, Sir Francis Drake. If he only got his armor halfway on before his life spark went out, no one would think the worse of him. Death of a soldier._

_I thought, at first, that his funeral was fitting. Until I heard the splash of his pine box, swallowed by the cold, hungry surf. You may think the waters in those far off seas should be warm, and it is. But the those seas are no less frigid in other ways than those that encase Greenland._

_That splash was colder still. His body would rest there eternally. The three volleys fired after him did nothing to wake me from my reverie. The quiet taps, the sound of the men going back to work—nothing held my attention for the rest of the day._

_It was not a fitting burial, in the end. He deserved better. Deserved to be buried at home, where his wife was waiting, where his house was wasting away. Not an eternity in the briney waters of the Atlantic. _

_I am glad that Jean Grey did not go to the same fate. She was my friend. _

_And the fire, that strange bird of prey it seemed to form, suited my memories of her. _

_But it does not stop me from wishing she was still here with us. Perhaps it is foolish of me, as Scotius seems to think. But he only pretends it doesn't hurt and broods in silence, alone. _

_I saw his tears. And he would've seen mine, if they had not frozen and fallen brittle from my cheeks so quickly. _

_She would not have wanted to see me cry._

Roberto Trefusis sat in the prow of the shallop, waiting for the others. The hour was early, far earlier than he ought to have been here. They would be along midday, so as to meet with their possibly adversary in the dark hours of night on the sea. Javier seemed to think they were near.

But those matters were far from his mind. Focused, biting at his bottom lip, he was exercising his powers carefully. In the palm of one hand sat a chunk of ice. Carefully and slowly, Robbie spoke to it, told it where to go and how to form. The moisture of the sea crashing against the sand, hanging in the air salty and heavy, provided ideal conditions.

Little by little, he "carved." Scotius had once compared this habit of his to scrimshaw, but it was nowhere near that sailor's art. This was something that was Robbie's alone. Something he rarely showed others, something he did when he had nowhere else to turn.

He felt as if he had nowhere to turn now.

Robbie concentrated for a moment, narrowing his eyes and pushing away his thoughts. Speaking to the crystallized moisture in his hand, he stretched it out carefully. One of the wings curved out and upward gracefully now, reaching for the sky. Straining.

It glistened. The sky was clear this morning, but the sunrise had shown him such colors of orange and pink… colors as he'd never seen them at home, even on the sea. It wasn't that it was so much more spectacular, or so much less frightening. In fact, it was perhaps the starkest sunrise he'd ever born witness to. But it looked so lovely, shining off his little icy creature, that he thought it was his favorite.

His creation was mostly formless, only the wings had come to life. That was what Robbie remembered best. The wings of a firebird in the sky.

"You are an artist, Master Trefusis."

Robbie's heart leapt and he followed, springing to his feet and nearly toppling the smallish boat as he did so. His icy wings clattered to the deck, but his hands were busy attempting to right him and so did not follow after.

"Apologies," the voice said again, followed by footsteps and the shallop creaking.

Roberto looked upward and saw Werner coming toward him. Making his way across the small deck carefully.

He felt his lips form a wry smile. He should not have been so afraid. Master Werner was often about early in the morning. This land where he could fly with no concern for his own visibility must seem like a godsend to him.

Much like the sea might've. If not for their great loss.

Werner reached him before he righted himself, and Robbie took the hand he offered. "Thank you, sir."

The hand was rougher than Robbie had expected it to be. Not like a sailor's hands, exactly… but not the hands of a gentleman. What had this man been before he'd been taken by the Inquisitor's people? Robbie had often wondered… but had never thought it prudent to put his nose where it did not belong. With Master McCoy, it was always so simple—his gregarious nature lent itself to conversation, even revelry at times. But Master Werner…

Once Roberto was righted, Werner retracted his hand. "You were sculpting."

Robbie brushed his tunic, instinctively strengthening his natural cold field to counteract the telltale burn he felt rising in his cheeks. "I woke earlier than the others. I thought to…," he looked out, over the water at the nearly complete sunrise. For some reason, he found it difficult to look at Werner directly. Perhaps because he seemed so hurt. Perhaps because he was so beautiful.

Whatever the reason, looking at the sun seemed a far better thing.

"It is a good morning for flying," Werner observed, as if Roberto had not left his sentence ungainly and half-formed.

Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Robbie saw his winged companion following his gaze toward the sun. He paused for a moment, watching the other boy as the delicate feathers on his wings ruffled faintly. Perhaps the calming sea breeze. Perhaps a twitch of the muscles beneath. Those feathers too looked soft… would they prove coarse like his hands?

Roberto doubted that they would. It seemed an ethereal sort of thing. Even if Werner claimed not to be an angel in truth, Robbie had never quite managed to convince himself. The evidence of his eyes had always been difficult to deny.

Werner's eyes met his now, that same level gaze he attached to everything. He was a solid young man. Level-gaze, level-head. "What were you carving?"

The flush returned unbidden to Robbie's cheeks, and he attempted to compensate with cold once more. He ducked to retrieve his half-finished ice creature, partially due to a desire to avoid the probing blue eyes of his companion. His fingers fumbled on the deck below the bench for his creation. "I did not carve," he replied, once his eyes were safely attached to the deck. "I created ice."

"There were wings," Werner pointed out.

Robbie made the air around him a little colder again. Particularly in the area of his cheeks. His fingers met with ice and he found the creature in tact completely. Slowly, he rose to standing and brushed his tunic once more. "I…"

What reply should he make? That he'd seen a firebird in the sky when Jean was burned to ashes? Could he tell this to an angel and retain some semblance of his dignity?

"Not like mine," Werner continued after a moment of silence.

Robbie raised his eyes to meet his companion's now. "No. Although they are rare and lovely…"

Werner nodded slowly. "I saw it as well."

For a short moment, Robbie could do nothing but breathe. Watching the eyes of this winged boy, stood in the prow of a landlocked boat in the wet morning.

Werner shivered, a slight and elegant motion that began with his shoulders and seemed to shake the silken fibers of each feather on his wings awake in its turn.

"I apologize for the cold," Robbie said quickly, removing his eyes from Werner's with something resembling pain. He'd been found out… and he'd not been expecting company, let alone company who might _understand_. "I… I was attempting to cool my body temperature. You startled me from my reveries—"

"I saw you from above," Werner admitted, crouching now, leaning his wings against the starboard hull carefully. He settled himself gracefully, though the position was not one that lent itself to such easy movements. " I saw the thing glistening in your hand. I apologize if I have alarmed you, Master Roberto."

"Robbie," he corrected, unthinking.

Werner looked up at him. "I have heard Javier speak to you so."

"You may do so," he replied.

"We have come through much," Werner seemed to be agreeing with this statement.

"We are as brothers."

Robbie wished he had not spoken so the moment the words escaped him. He avoided his instinct to make himself colder as the flush spread to his neck.

Werner only nodded, seeming to accept this designation. "We should speak to one another as such." He looked up then, cocking his head in a queer, curious manner. "Will you show me what you have made?"

Slowly, fighting his instincts to the contrary, Robbie held out his hand. The small, unfinished figure gleamed, prismatic in the early orange sunlight. Two wings stretched up and out from a formless center, forming a "V" shape in the space between them. The edges were pointed, an angry shape rather than soft. Werner's wings had a soft shape, powerful though they were.

The firebird's had not shared that shape.

He was silent for a moment, eyes fixed on the crystalline object in Roberto's hand. After a long moment, Werner spoke, "It is a good likeness. The ice seems as if it's on fire in your hand."

"I…," Robbie stared at the thing in his hand. He no longer remembered creating it. It looked… right, to him. Proper. A fitting memorial for Jean Grey. The sister of his heart. "She would have liked it," he said, quietly.

Werner was silent again, looking downward at the deck. Robbie concentrated on the ice sculpture, forgetting the presence of another for a moment. Carefully, he elongated the chunk of ice between the wings, stretching it out into the shape of a girl.

A woman. It was so easy to forget, at times. Jean had made it so easy. Robbie had no siblings, and knew no women other than his mother. His youth had been spent in a boy's school and on _HMS Defiance_. So he'd always spoken to Jean as he would've spoken to John.

But she would want to be remembered as what she was. Javier had told them so, and so it would be.

Stretching the moisture, resolidifying it when it reached the shape he desired, the suggestion of a feminine form. A fairy to possess the wings, rather than a bird. He felt the form was somewhat more awkward than the wings themselves in design…

But the wings he had seen. For Jean Grey's womanhood, all he could provide was a vague fairytale shape—a product of his mind and the dresses his mother wore. A sisterly sort of difference in her, seemly and elegant.

It was the best he could do.

"You must think me a fool."

Robbie stopped his icy machinations, focusing again on the crouched angel nearby. "Apologies, sir—" he stopped himself. "Werner. How do you mean this?"

Werner met his eyes again.

Robbie was shocked to see a slight sheen of wetness there. Vague, misty, but there just the same. He could feel it inside him, it called to him as all water did. It caused a lump to rise into his throat, though he knew not why.

"For my imagined friendship with… Master Grey," came the halting answer.

"Master Grey…," Robbie furrowed his brow, considering. Perhaps it had been somewhat unfortunate for Jean Grey that she had been forced into a man's clothing for the majority of her existence, but it had been a necessary fiction. "I think nothing of the kind. Though your insistence on referring to Jean as such is admittedly confusing—"

Werner gave a muffled laugh. Robbie was quick to note that it was not a mirthful sort of laugh. But one more easily associated with a short, choked sob.

"Then you have not been told," the angel continued, looking out toward the sunrise once more. "That I did not know."

His true meaning took a moment's time to dawn on Roberto. But when it did, he moved nearer to the other boy, crouching beside him, back against the hull.

He considered, and finally decided to speak. "What does it matter if she was thought man or woman? Does it make our affection for her grow or shrink, as if it's some passing and conditional matter?"

Werner returned his gaze to Roberto's, this time less misty. "Did we all love her so much?"

Solemnly, Robbie nodded. "Scotius thinks to keep the pain for himself. But we all… meet and deal with death in our own ways."

As a testament to his words, he held out the ice fairy in his hand. Rather, a fire fairy. Made of ice, but born of fire.

Werner reached out for it, eyes locked on to its shimmer with a kind of religious fascination. Roberto gave up the thing to him gladly, watching him examine it. And as he did so, he realized that he had made Jean into something not unlike Werner himself.

"It will melt," Werner observed, after a long period of silence during which he examined the ice sculpture as one enthralled.

Robbie considered. Then spoke once more, "What inspired its creation cannot."

When Werner met his eyes again, Robbie thought a smile was almost threatening the corners of his lips. He could not be certain, however. To date, he had yet to see Master Werner smile.

_We talked an hour, maybe more. We did not speak again of Jean Grey and her death, or of our shared sadness. But we did not have to. Werner is one who speaks with his eyes more than his words._

_The sun was full upon us before the others arrived, carrying provisions and a semblance of reality. The fire fairy had melted as we talked, her water rejoining its brethren in the air, all around us. _

_That evening, we stopped Enrique and his compatriots just before they reached Roanoke. When we returned to the colony, I had time again to consider the day. I found myself thinking far less about Enrique, and far more about Master Werner._

_A creature of the sky and air, an elemental figure. Was that why he was afraid of nothing and sad for everything? Requiring freedom that no man was ever granted to the very center of his being, perpetually denied by his human environment? Was that why he seemed to need something to believe in so badly?_

_Or was I, lost in this new world, searching for someone, something I could understand? A creature of ice and water myself, who could know better?_


End file.
